Chuck Probably Didn't Mean It.

Barkley rarely does, after all

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Without ogling its existing contract with the NBA (and it’s a safe bet we won’t be getting a look anytime soon), it’s impossible to know whether Warner Bros. Discovery actually has the mortal-lock ability to simply match an offer and thus maintain its broadcast rights with the league.

The public communication on this, frankly, stinks. It turns out that neither the NBA nor WBD wants the common folk to join them in the weeds of the legal wrangling.

What is known from the available reporting, including The Athletic's Andrew Marchand and Mike Vorkunov, is that WBD, whose signature TNT program “Inside the NBA” is the single most dynamic element of any of the NBA’s various broadcast packages, wants to match one of the existing offers, most likely the one written by Amazon.

The NBA apparently feels that it can prevent Warner Bros. Discovery from exercising this back-end matching clause, which kind of makes one wonder why it was written in the first place. The league isn’t going to include such clauses in future contracts, and…You know what? This is honestly too tedious to cover.

So let’s leave it at this: The people at WBD want in. They want another long-term deal. Their engine for success with it, aside from the quality of play itself, is “Inside the NBA,” which opens and closes every great hoops broadcast that TNT ever produces.

And for us, the viewers, WBD’s avid interest in continuing can mean only one thing: Nobody at the company is taking Charles Barkley at his word.